XISP tips,news, & technology » Mikrotik

Mikrotik 5.0Beta5 released

j2sw — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 16:36:18 +0000

What's new in 5.0beta5 (2010-Jul-23 14:50):

*) email - supports multiple CCs
*) fix 5&10MHz channel support for 11n cards;
*) ssh - fix ssh client crash;
*) ssh - password authentication is disabled for users with public keys;
*) ping - fixed ping packet-loss calculation;

Torrent available here:
http://www.mikrotik.com/download/routeros-ALL-5.0beta5.torrent

The Dude – MikroTik Wiki

j2sw — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 10:04:01 +0000

Mikrotik releases documentation for The Dude.

The Dude – MikroTik Wiki.

Difference between signal strength and quality

j2sw — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 15:31:10 +0000

One of the things I have to explain to clients on a regular basis is the difference between signal strength and quality of that signal. It is possible to have a good signal strength but poor quality. Think of receiving a wireless signal as a person with a megaphone at the opposite end of a football field. You might be able to hear the person talking through the megaphone (ie. Signal Strength) but you might not be able to make out their words clearly due to over-modulation, poor quality megaphone, etc. (ie. Signal quality).

The following was taken from an AP on the second floor of my house. This AP connects, via a second wireless card, to an AP on the 3rd floor. As you can see the signal strength is good, but quality is poor.

This link has a bandwidth test running to it. About 3 megs of traffic is traveling over the wireless link. As you can see the quality is quite poor. This results in quite a bit of jitter and poor performance. There could be several reasons for this. Maybe I have some other 2.4GHZ devices interfering. Since it is one level down it could be going through too much material (aka house). I could also have a hardware issue. Antenna not resonating correctly or a card with a bad transmit or receive.

Mikrotik 5.0Beta4

j2sw — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 15:15:45 +0000

What's new in 5.0beta4 (2010-Jun-29 15:48):

*) console - /ping command again returns number of ping responses received,
    didn't work in 5.0beta3;
*) added ability to monitor each cpu core usage;
*) added support for SATA,SCSI & USB CD-ROMs in CD installer;
*) fixed problem - IRQ balancer did not use correct CPU core
   on non auto MSI irqs after reboot;
*) fixed memory leak;
*) route - new property 'vrf-interface' (for static and dhcp routes),
    automatically updates 'routing-mark' of the route to keep it in the same
    VRF as the specified interface;

Mikrotik Announces U.S. MUM in Phoenix

j2sw — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 16:00:50 +0000

The next User Meeting (MUM) in Phoenix, Arizona (USA) on September 30th – October 1st 2010. The MUM will take place in the splendid Chaparral Suites hotel in Scottsdale.

More information about the MUM:

http://mum.mikrotik.com/2010/US/

http://mum.mikrotik.com/register.php?section=21

Router OS 4.10 Released

j2sw — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 04:36:32 +0000

What's new in 4.10 (2010-May-28 13:59):

*) added support for ethernet switch configuration in WinBox;
*) allow to configure 11n wireless rate tx powers in WinBox;
*) dhcp server - show non-printable option 82 agent-circuit-id and
   agent-remote-id values in hexadecimal notation also in winbox;
*) api - fixed '/ip/route/print', was not showing '.id' values;
*) console - fixed printing of OID values;
*) lcd - added support for AX89063

Torrent is available at:
http://www.mikrotik.com/download/routeros-ALL-4.10.torrent

1:1 Nat setup with Mikrotik

j2sw — Thu, 20 May 2010 16:16:15 +0000

Purpose: This document encompasses the procedure on configuring a 1:1 nat on a mikrotik CPE.

Definitions for the Document:
Public IP. An Internet routable IP address.
Static IP address: An Ip that does not change. This can either be a private or a public IP address.
Private IP address. A non public routable IP address. This includes. 10.0.0.0/8, 172.16.0.0/12,192.168.0.0/16, 169.254.0.0/16
In the following example we are assuming the following:
35.35.42.7 is our Public IP
192.168.3.125 is our Static DHCP IP we will set in step 2.
Our CPE is in station mode.
We are running a DHCP server on ether1 Interface which our customer is plugged into. The DHCP scope is 192.168.3.0/25
There are 3 Basic steps involved.

1.Bind Public IP to wlan interface
2.Make endpoint a Static client
3.Configure 2 NAT rules.

1.The Public Ip needs to be bound to the WLAN interface. If the network is handing out Public IPs already this step is already done.

2.You will need to make the device where the 1:1 nat ends at a static DHCP client. This means it is receiving an Ip from DHCP, but it will never change. This is a very important step. The Customer LAN side does not have to be DHCP. It can be static as long as the appropriate info is setup. I find running DHCP on the LAN side makes life easier.

Go to IP-DHCP Server. Click on the leases tab. Find the device you wish the 1:1 nat to end at. Highlight it and click “make static”. If there is more than 1 device in this list you will have to verify with the customer which device they need the 1:1 nat to. There are a couple of ways to verify this.

1.Have the customer confirm the MAC address of the router or PC.
2.Remove all the leases from the leases tab by highlighting them and clicking the minus button. Have the customer reboot the router or PC.

3.You will configure 2 nat rules. One tells the device what to do with outbound traffic and the other tells it what to do with inbound traffic.

/ip firewall nat add chain=dstnat dst-address=35.35.42.7\
to-ports=0-65535 protocol=tcp action=netmap to-addresses=192.168.3.125

/ip firewall nat add chain=srcnat src-address=192.168.3.125 \
to-ports=0-65535 protocol=tcp action=netmap to-addresses=35.35.42.7

Simple OSPF with Mikrotik RouterOS Part1-Setup

j2sw — Mon, 17 May 2010 17:51:43 +0000

The goal of this exercise is to show how to setup OSPF between two routerboards to enable communication between two separate IP networks. In this case we want the 2 PC’s, which are on separate DHCP networks to be able to communicate with each other via dynamic routing.

Our lab setup consists of the following hardware:
-2 RouterBoard 450’s connected together via Ethernet on ether1.
-A PC attached to port 2 of each Rb450

The configuration consists of :

Router1
Ether1 IP: 10.10.10.1/30
Ether2 IP:192.168.3.1/24
DHCP running on Ether2 handing out DHCP in the range of 192.168.3.10-192.168.3.254

Router2
Ether1 IP: 10.10.10.2/30
Ether2 IP: 192.168.4.1/24
DHCP running on Ether2 handing out DHCP in the range of 192.168.4.10-192.168.4.254

Stay tuned for the video coming soon.

What SP means on Mikrotik

j2sw — Wed, 12 May 2010 13:46:14 +0000

Ever looked on your data rates and see the letters “SP” after the data rate?

This means Short Preamble.

Types of Mikrotik Certificates

j2sw — Tue, 11 May 2010 05:13:07 +0000

MTCNA – MikroTik Certified Network Associate
MTCRE – MikroTik Certified Routing Engineer
MTCWE – MikroTik Certified Wireless Engineer
MTCTCE – MikroTik Certified Traffic Control Engineer
MTCUME – MikroTik Certified User Management Engineer
MTCINE – MikroTik Certified Inter-networking Engineer